Rapist’s tracking shock

One of state’s worst criminals gets monitor removed

A PRISONER advocate says he understands a Tasmanian woman’s concerns that the man who raped her and murdered her fiance has had his electronic monitoring device removed.

However, Prisoners’ Legal Service chair Greg Barns SC said electronic surveillance should be “used sparingly”.

Tameka Ridgeway said she was shocked when she was phoned and told one of Tasmania’s worst criminals, Jamie John Curtis, had successfully applied to have his electronic monitoring device removed. “I was in total disbelief,” Ms Ridgeway said. “There was no forewarning about it, no one told me he had applied to have it removed.

“It was my one peace of mind and for his other victims too. Now that reassurance has been taken away.”

Curtis was in Risdon Prison since 1986 for stabbing Dean Allie to death, repeatedly raping Ms Ridgeway and abducting a 15-year-old paper delivery girl.

He was first released on parole in 2018 and began work at a butcher’s shop before he returned to prison on fresh offences before again being granted parole early last year.

Ms Ridgeway said she was called and later emailed by the government’s victims support unit just days before the monitor was removed last Wednesday.

Mr Barns said the Parole Board’s decision on Curtis would have been “very thorough”.

“If a prisoner has completed their sentence it is unfair to keep restrictions on them,” he said. “One can always sympathise with the concerns of victims but if someone is doing well and complying with their restrictions they should be rewarded.

“The authorities have decided that he no longer requires electronic surveillance, which should only be used sparingly.”

However, Ms Ridgeway said she was worried she may run into Curtis in the street and would not be safe. “We don’t know where he is,” she said. “There are orders in place that he not enter Glenorchy but he has broken parole in the past and could quite easily again.”

A Tasmanian government spokesman said the government understood Ms Ridgeway’s concerns but the Parole Board was an independent statutory body and “makes decisions independently of government”. “However, we are always open to listening to victim-survivors and considering what more can be done to support them, as we have in the past,” he said.

A Department of Justice spokesman said the Parole Board “does not comment on individual matters”.

“Victims are provided an opportunity to make a submission to the board when an application for parole is considered and this information is retained and considered by the board when any requests for variation of parole are made,” he said.